Ive honestly given up in those BRs to the point I’ve stopped playing them even for tanks. there is so many overtiered jink vehicles and obnoxious undertiered ones that I cant play the vehicles I like anymore as you will either:
get lazerbeamed by a pretty modern spaa in your ww2 plane
face fully stabilised scout tanks with missiles in your unstabilised little scout car with no armour
your ww2 tank design gets hammered to death by a 1970s soviet mbt with composite armour
or an A4E eats a whole lobby with its amazing CAS loadouts
they’re kinda just boats with loads of firepower. They’re fine in GRB, though I’d say arguably outclassed by those a step or two below it in terms of BR. V1 and V3 are the best (ones better in one thing, the other is better in another) and the V2 just sucks all around.
Ive relegated myself to 6.7 grb only and 11.3 air occasionally if the air event isn’t one of the crappy ww2 jets put to 8.0 like the jewish meteor was for the time being until the most recent BR changes to some notable vehicles us undone and the radar SPAAGs (shilka and better) all go up
The shilkas are severly underperforming as is, they do not need to go up, nor does the gepard, just a little bit of decompression would fix most of the imbalance between CAS and SPAA
All i need to know to be sure that this whole discussion is pointless.
One of the lowest br cas planes that gets tv guided gbus as standoff weapons AND can still carry 3 bullpups while having ccip so you can also choose to just take dumb bombs and stay low is not strong. SMH, if that thing is not strong what is it then? 5 free kills only, must be bad. Hell it even has rwr so you will know when you are radar locked and gepards and whatnot have a gun solution on you.
The next best thing to probably compare it to is the event buccaneer also at 8.7 which is just a faster boat and only has 4 bullpups and dumb bombs but no gun. And that thing is also a beast in ground rb. or the scimitar with 4 bullpups, gun and more powerful engines than the a4e which is also a beast. Why oh why is the A4e bad then with more guided ordinance and in comparison to the buccaneer at least somewhat of an ability to fight other planes and helis?
No one forces you to massively uptier the MK24… This is literally a you issue, the uk does have better cas for 8.0, for example the attaker, the vampire or the sea hawk, they do much better than the mk 24, you take a 6.7 at 8.0 and it does bad, what a surprise…
Just lawnmow and wait for a hit marker or scout, or wait for tracers or smoke plume to find where spaa is and come up over the horizon behind them, if they arent staring at that exact spot you win.
SPAA from 8.0 to 11.7 do what they are supposed to and create a bubble around the battlefield to prevent CAS from loitering above it with impunity. If you want to play CAS you need to be glued to the deck if you are within 10km of it.
The fundemental fact though is that ARB has been designed to be bad for strike aircraft, many are nearly unplayable within that gamemode and you can forget trying some form of proper “CAS” Gameplay within ARB.
The Only gamemode that is okay is ASB but that has major limitations and hurdles too.
And thats without even mentioning Helis that basically have no where else.
The idea that “planes should just play ARB” fails to grasp the idea that ARB is not a suitable gamemode for all aircraft and many are forced to play GRB/GSB.
The best CAS gameplay i’ve ever had in War Thunder came from a GSB match and not an ARB or ASB match.
Also. Combined arms is a core part of IRL and is a core part of War Thunder, always has been and always will be. If you want a pure tank game. there is always WoT
Then War Thunder should make a Combined Arms mode, and give us Ground battles as Ground only. Oh wait, Gaijin won’t because everyone here knows that Ground battles will be popular to the point no one will play Combined Arms.